MAKING MIGHTY EMPIRES SEA TILES
The new Mighty Empires tiles can make for fun little modeling projects. We decided to make some sea-based tiles to use based on our house rules which are explained here. The steps below use a rotary tool that you may not have on hand – we present an alternative method near the bottom of this page (courtesy of the White Dwarf team) that doesn't use power tools.
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To make these sea tiles, we used modeling putty, a Sculpting Tool, Water Effects, and an electric rotary tool equipped with a sandpaper head and a carving head. |
The first step is to pick out the tiles that would be good to use for converting into coastline. We picked these tiles because we could use the rivers as a guide to where the water should go. |
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Once you know where you want the water to be, use the sand paper head on the rotary tool to sand down the rough area so that it is the same elevation as the river. Make sure you are very careful and keep your fingers away from the tool. If you need to, you can clamp the tile to your workspace instead of holding it by hand. |
Here you can see that the area has been smoothed down. Make sure you don't sand down too much, or you might end up going right through the plastic tile. It's also a good idea to use the rotary tool on a low-speed setting so that you don't accidentally melt the plastic. |
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After you have sanded down the main area, you can use the sculpting head to even up the edges. |
The variety of tiles leads to a variety of coastlines if you follow the rivers as guides. |
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Sometimes the rotary tool will take off more plastic than you wanted or leave the edges rough. Use the sculpting head to even them up as much as possible. Then, you can use modeling putty to fill in any gouges and restore the shape of the tile. |
Lastly, paint the tiles to match the tiles you already have and paint the water a suitable color. We went with Mordian Blue as our base color. Then, we carefully brushed on Water Effects over the water areas. You can apply several layers of Water Effects for added depth, but allow each layer to dry before applying a new one. |
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For this tile, we used a river to create an inlet so we could connect the coast with other inland rivers. |
These tiles were created by Andy Hall, member of the White Dwarf team. They offer a different way of making sea coast tiles. For these, Andy used the rivers to represent the beach, and instead of sanding down the rough texture, he painted it to look like waves. This is one way to make sea tiles if you don't have access to a rotary tool. |
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These tiles were made the same way as the step-by-step guide above shows, only we used different colors to paint them. For these tiles, we wanted a dirtier, desert look. For the water, we once again used Mordian Blue for the base color, but we added a small amount of Scorched Brown so that the water would appear dirty. |
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Mighty Empires Maps
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